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How the Mortgage Bar
Keeps Moving Higher

Home Buyers With Good Credit Confront Increased Scrutiny
And Fewer Choices as Lenders React to Subprime Debacle

By

Jonathan Karp

Updated Aug. 14, 2007 12:01 a.m. ET

Frankie Van Cleave says she has paid all her bills on time for more than three decades, save one car payment that got delayed in Christmas mail. But neither solid credit nor her track record running a number of businesses is sparing the 70-year-old from the turmoil in the home-mortgage market.

Several mortgage brokers had courted her to refinance a $1 million adjustable-rate mortgage she currently carries on her home, on two acres of prime riverfront property in Marietta, Ga. But most of them "dropped me like a hot...